Free Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl by Carmen Reid

skilfully towards goal.
    Gina fumbled her stick and saw Penny charging towards her, shouting out, ‘I’ll get it! She’s the new girl and she’s useless!’
    As the ball sped towards her, Gina realized it was a now-or-never moment. She had just a second or two to stop the ball and hit it away with all her strength or else Penny was going to take it from under her nose and score.
    Gina’s first thought was to throw down her stick and run as fast as her legs could carry her. She hadn’t wanted to be in the stupid team anyway. She couldn’t play this dumb game! If she was totally honest, she was only here because she thought it might help her make friends with Amy and Niffy, but now she saw that it was much more likely that they would never speak to her again. Because she was going to mess up!
    Then Penny, still running, began to laugh. Feeling a rush of anger, Gina made her decision. She wasn’t going to run; she was at least going to try.
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    She swung her stick as hard as she could. There was a crack as she made contact with the ball. But the rebound, which shot up into her hands, made her drop the stick in pain.
    ‘Ow!’ she couldn’t help wailing as she tucked her smarting fingers under her arms.
    ‘Dangerous play!’ Penny was shouting, and Miss Chrysler was blowing her whistle. All Gina could see was Niffy’s thunderous face. Although the ball was right up at the other end of the field, clearly Gina had not done a Good Thing. She suspected her stick had gone above her shoulder again. And hadn’t Niffy warned her about this? ‘It’s not frigging golf !’ she’d told her.
    In the blurry moments that followed, Gina was sent off; Penny was awarded a free shot and scored, making it a terrible 1–0.
    It was nearly an hour later when Amy and Niffy returned to the dorm to find Gina sulking angrily.
    Before they could even get out a word about how the rest of the match had gone, Gina let rip. ‘Don’t blame me! I never want to be in your team again! I didn’t want to be in it in the first place! It was a really bad idea. I just felt guilty about Willow.’
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    Both girls just smiled at her.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Amy. ‘You’re right.’
    ‘We were desperate, newbie,’ Niffy agreed. ‘But it’s OK,’ she added, her smile spreading further.
    ‘Oh!’ Gina got it. ‘You totally won, didn’t you?’
    ‘Yes!’ they both replied together, and Niffy gave some sort of bizarre little victory jig.
    ‘You total daftie.’ Amy laughed at Niffy.
    ‘It was a good shot,’ Niffy assured Gina. ‘You’ve got very strong arms. Do you do weights?’
    ‘No. It’s probably from tennis,’ Gina told them, ‘and swimming. We have a pool – and a court – at home.’
    For once she didn’t say this boastfully: she didn’t want to put these girls off. She was beginning to realize they were the only chance of friends she had in this dump.
    ‘A tennis court?’ Niffy asked, looking excited.
    ‘Yeah . . . but it’s not such a big deal over—’
    ‘You play tennis?’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Do you play well?’
    ‘I’m OK . . . but just a minute . . .’ Gina was suspicious. ‘Don’t tell me – there’s a junior house tennis cup as well, isn’t there?’
    Niffy just nodded and said, as if to herself, ‘We need 86
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    six: three pairs and two people good enough to play singles as well—’
    ‘Don’t even think about it!’ Gina told her.
    ‘Oh yes! The hockey season is now officially over and it’s tennis from now on,’ Niffy explained, stripping off her muddy and sweat-soaked games clothes and bundling them into her laundry bag.
    ‘OK,’ Amy began, ‘the plan is we get showered and changed, then we take you out to see the many sights of Edinburgh.’
    ‘We’re allowed to go out?’ Gina asked; she’d somehow thought